Nihil Fit

musings on Christian spirituality, philosophy and theology

Thursday, January 11, 2007

More on FOTL

I'm delving deeper into the fear-of-the-Lord. The more I meditate on the wisdom of the Hebrew scriptures, the more I see how important this idea is. It goes hand-in-hand with our humility and God's sovereignty.

In a previous post, I mentioned how FOTL is often accompanied with disorientation and trembling. Now I am beginning to see that these emotions are resolved when we accept the FOTL. We never get "control" of things, but we simply begin to rest in our lack of control. Now if you're like me, and I know I am, then relinquishing control is no easy task. I'm a classic control freak.

I think the FOTL means leaving some things to mystery. It means saying, "I don't know how or why God did that, but that's OK." We don't have to figure everything out. In fact, we can't. The book of Job was given to us as a corrective for those who demand that God's mind be laid open for them. Sometimes, God doesn't make sense, to us. This doesn't mean that God violates logic -- it means that we can't always understand his reasons or methods.

At the end of the day, what do we do? If we keep his commandments, will that guarantee our good fortune? No. If we just trust him and do nothing, is that enough? No. Qoheleth tells us to "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this applies to every person."

Miracles and Providence

This is a helpful post from John DePoe on the confusion often surrounding miracles. I would add that I am open to the idea that God might be able to "intervene" by working through quantum indeterminacy. In such a case, no natural laws would be broken. On the other hand, I am troubled by the idea of indeterminacy. I lean towards Einstein's view on this -- that quantum particles really do act according to law, but we just don't know those laws. Any physics friends out there can feel free to dissect me on this.